The hollow echoes of alarm cries began to spill through the doorway, drawing an angry curse from the Amnesian Hero. "By the bolt of Zeus, what's wrong with you people? Just tell me how to find the Lady of Pain, and I'll be gone!"

"I help you, yes?" called Jayk."You have only to take me with you!"

"Quiet!" One of the tiefling's guards slapped his palm over her mouth, then dragged her through the iron door.

They were only halfway across the threshold when the Amnesian Hero noticed a certain narrowing in the pupils of Jayk's eyes. The man screamed and jerked his hand away. The appendage was bleeding profusely and already beginning to swell. He opened his mouth to say something, then his eyes rolled back in his head. He fell dead on the floor, his vacant gaze fixed on the gloom above.

Jayk whirled on her second captor, her mouth open to reveal the needlelike fangs that had folded down from the roof of her mouth. The guard wisely released his grip and hurled himself to the floor. The tiefling laughed, then blew him a kiss and, leaving Tessali to quiver behind his iron door, slunk across the floor to the Amnesian Hero.

"Come, you and I, we leave here together." Her pupils were still slender and diamondlike, and she had two runnels of dark blood dribbling down her chin. "Then I show you how to find the Lady of Pain, yes?"

The Amnesian Hero did not answer immediately. Instead, he cleaned and sheathed his sword, at the same time studying the carnage around him. Why would so many men elect to do battle with him rather than answer a simple question about the Lady of Pain? When he could think of no reasonable answer, he reluctantly looked back to Jayk and nodded.

"As you will; we have a bargain." He picked up his amphora, which his nervous chair-bearers had been wise enough to leave lying upon the floor, then turned toward the exit. "It appears I have need of a guide." Dustmen

How Jayk got that blood-bubbling slash across her thigh, I do not know. Nor can I relate how she and the Thrasson came to be panting for breath in a crooked dead-end alley, surrounded by black tangles of razorvine and cornered by seven armored githyanki. I can only say that as they fled the Gatehouse, the tiefling's body flared with a silver aura of delight, and the sight of a denizen's joy is more than I can bear. There is a flash behind my eyes, then a raw, scintillating light – a sparkling torment like an axe blade in my brain – and then I see nothing but bright-winking stars. It is my weakness, this bedazzled blindness. It is a false fire, a brilliant burning apparition that flashes and fades and leaves in its place a silhouette all the blacker for its passing, and so it was that I lost for a time the Amnesian Hero and his guide.

When my vision cleared, I found them in this cul-de-sac, gasping for air and searching the hard walls for escape routes that were nowhere to be found. Every barricaded door and bricked-over window hung hidden behind thick snarls of razorvine that even the Amnesian Hero knew better than to think of climbing. Beneath the glossy black leaves lay fluted stalks with ridges as sharp as swords, and so dense Were the coils that anyone scaling them would find himself hopelessly tangled. There was only one way out of the trap. The Thrasson lay the amphora on the ground, then drew his star-forged blade and faced the githyanki.

They had the look of elves gone bad. Their faces were slender and delicate, marked by sharp angles and warped features, with gritty yellow skin and eyes that gleamed like polished coal. They kept their gray lips raised in snaky, fang-toothed snarls, and their flat noses were so small they looked almost absent. All seven were armored in dark, baroque plate and tall cone-shaped helmets, and each carried a two-handed sword with a saw-toothed blade. Wherever they could find a lobe or a fold of skin to pierce hung chains of gold finery, a sure sign that they were both more vicious and more capable than the many bloodblades who would gladly have taken the jewelry from their dead bodies.

"We have no… quarrel with you." The Amnesian Hero was still winded by the long run from the Gatehouse. "Stand aside, and I won't hurt… any of you."

"Tessali said you two was barmy," sheered the tallest githyanki. "Come along quiet. You're worth more alive than dead."

The Amnesian Hero gnashed his teeth at the speaker's insolence, but held his temper and tried to think of a quiet way to dispose of his seven enemies. The sound of clashing steel would certainly draw the attention of the many search parties scouring the streets of the Hive for him and Jayk, and then there would be even more bloodletting.

The Amnesian Hero sighed heavily. "Very well. It seems we are captured." He flipped his sword around and laid the hilt over his free arm, then stepped forward. "I have no wish to fight."

The githyanki slipped back. "That's far enough, berk." He pointed at the ground. "Drop your sticker there."

"As you wish." The Amnesian Hero stopped and gently tossed his sword into the dirt. Though it grated on the Thrasson to treat his weapon so badly, he hoped the act would quell the githyanki's suspicions. If he could make a hostage of the leader, perhaps he could end the confrontation without shedding blood or creating a clamor. "We surrender."

"Surrender?" scoffed Jayk. She was standing behind the Amnesian Hero, and he could not see what she was doing. "Never!"

"Magic!" Three githyanki cried the word at once, then lunged for the tiefling together.

Cursing Jayk's impatience, the Amnesian Hero pivoted on his heel and slammed a spinning thrust kick into the first warrior's flank. The fellow's breastplate spared him any shattered ribs, but the blow sent him crashing into the next githyanki, who was knocked deep into a vicious snarl of razorvine. The third one charged past, his saw-toothed sword already arcing down at the tiefling. The Thrasson thrust a hand out and caught him by the collar, then yanked him off his feet.

The githyanki's helmet hit the ground first, striking with a deep, metallic toll. Two paces beyond the fellow's feet, Jayk was tossing a gob of rough wool into the air and uttering the dark-sounding syllables of a spell. Before the Amnesian Hero could turn to face his remaining foes, four huge swords slammed into his back. The blades shattered against his god-forged armor, but that did not prevent the impact from driving him off his feet. He landed face first and tasted mordant Sigil dirt.

The battle clamor grew abruptly distant and muffled. The Amnesian Hero feared, for only the briefest instant, that a foe's blade had actually rent Hephaestus's magic and struck his head. When he did not fall unconscious or feel his skull erupting into pain, however, he quickly realized that could not be so and sprang to his feet. He found himself facing four astonished githyanki holding four broken swords. They appeared to be shouting at each other, but the only sound in the alley was a faint, uneven drone no louder than a fly's buzzing-apparently a result of the spell Jayk had cast.

Resisting the temptation to glance at his sword, which still lay upon the ground behind his four enemies, the Amnesian Hero hurled himself forward. The leader shoved his fellows into the fray and retreated. The three githyanki flailed at the Thrasson, but their broken swords always shattered against a pauldron or glanced off a vambrace. The Thrasson slammed his elbow up under a chin, and one foe fell; he grabbed a throat and pinched off the carotid arteries, and another dropped; he trapped a wild swing, then popped a shoulder out of its socket. The last attacker fell to the ground, the scream that came from his gaping mouth silenced by Jayk's magic.

As fast as the Amnesian Hero disposed of his enemies, he was not quick enough to reach his sword; the githyanki leader had already snatched it off the ground. This time, the Thrasson did not rush to the attack, as even his god-made armor was no defense against that star-forged blade. Instead, he glanced in Jayk's direction and found her atop the warrior he had kicked earlier, clawing at his eyes and doing something bloody with a dagger. Not three paces from her, one githyanki was thrashing about in the razorvine, growing more tangled by the instant and bleeding from all the places not covered by his dark armor. Another fellow, the one whose helmet had made such a toll when the Thrasson jerked him to the ground, was shaking his head and slowly rising to his knees.